Juan Torena Movies
- 1953
The answer is: A turgid melodrama. The question: What is Jeopardy? Barbara Stanwyck stars as a suburbanite on a Mexican vacation with her husband (Barry Sullivan) and son (Lee Aaker). The threesome runs afoul of escape convict Ralph Meeker. Stanwyck's dilemma: Attempting to rescue her husband from drowning, while staving off the carnal demands of Meeker, who holds Stanwyck and her son at gunpoint. Jeopardy is on and off in only 69 minutes, but 64 of those minutes seem far longer. Trivia note: When dramatized on Lux Radio Theater, Jeopardy costarred child actor Harry Shearer, later a comic regular on Saturday Night Live. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, (more)
- 1952
While Shelley Winters is top-billed, Ricardo Montalban is the real star of My Man and I. Montalban plays Mexican transient farmer Chu-Chu Ramirez, determined to make something of himself and improve his lot in life. He falls in love with disillusioned alcoholic Nancy (Winters), intending to help her overcome her illness. Meanwhile, Ramirez' nasty boss Ansel Ames (Wendell Corey) is shot in an accident. Jealous over the fact that his wife (Claire Trevor) has designs on Ramirez, Ames accuses the Mexican of attempted murder. The manner in which Ames and his wife are forced to tell the truth is one of the oddest (and most compelling) sequences in all of William Wellman's work. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shelley Winters, Ricardo Montalban, (more)
- 1950
The year is 1942. Ensign Chuck Palmer (Tyrone Power) is stranded in the Japanese-occupied Philippines after his ship is torpedoed. Linking up with several other American refugees, Palmer helps the Filipinos organize a resistance movement against the enemy. They even manage to construct a few jerry-built radio stations to keep tabs on Japanese fleet movements. Hard to believe that Palmer finds romance under these trying circumstances, but he does, in the form of Jeanne Martinez (Micheline Presle), the wife of a Filipino war hero. Based on the novel by Ira Wolfert, American Guerilla in the Philippines is directed with unvarnished efficiency by Fritz Lang. Standouts in the supporting cast include Tom Ewell as Tyrone Power's wisecracking buddy and Robert Barrat as General Douglas MacArthur. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tyrone Power, Micheline Presle, (more)
- 1947
In this drama, a Bostonian socialite marries the owner of a racehorse and begins a life of globe-trotting from international track to track until her hubby runs out of money. In desperation, he borrows money from an ex-girlfriend who decides that she will not let him leave her again. Meanwhile, the wife is beginning to wonder why she married him and begins contemplating divorce. Things change when her philandering spouse dumps the other, decides to rebuild his stables, and bets every last nickel on his one remaining horse's Kentucky Derby run. His horse barely loses to his wife's horse. Fortunately, the couple makes up and they live a long, happy life together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cornel Wilde, Maureen O'Hara, (more)
- 1938
Latin-American singing sensation Tito Guizar is the sole raison d'etre for the Spanish-language musical Mi Dos Amores (My Two Loves). Guizar is cast as Julio Bertolin, a struggling medical student who hopes to finance his education without the help of his wealthy father. To pick up a few extra bucks, Bertolin begins singing in a barrio cabaret, and before long he's the toast of Los Angeles. The plot rears its ugly head when Bertolin is innocently involved in a fatal shooting, but by film's end he is free to sing again and again. Taking advantage of the more relaxed censorship in South America, the film's producers include a couple of rather torrid love scenes -- though by the standards of the 1990s, these scenes are downright puritanical. Featured in the cast is child actress Evelyn Del Rio, best known to comedy fans as W.C. Fields' obnoxious daughter in The Bank Dick. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tito Guizar
- 1938
Sucedio en la Habana (It Happened in Havana) had to be the most ambitious Cuban film of the 1930s: in any event, it was one of the most successful. Mixing equal portions of music, comedy and romance, director Ramon Peon follows several festive protagonists on what amounts to a guided tour of Havana's celebrated nightspots. The huge cast consists of practically every "big name" of the Cuban stage and screen, and also calls upon the talents of a veritable battalion of songwriters. Indeed, one critic noted that the opening credits alone took four minutes to roll across the screen! Despite a huge budget and an all-star cast, the film is surprisingly shoddy at times; particularly badly handled are the song solos, which feature some of the clumsiest lip-synching ever captured on film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Luana Alcaniz, Juan Torena, (more)
- 1937
In this detective adventure, a young woman is accused of stealing a valuable necklace from her boss and takes off for Spain just before the Civil War. She is trailed by a detective form Scotland Yard. He finds her and soon falls in love and the two try to flee on a British ship. The story does not reveal whether the girl was innocent or not. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Loretta Young, Don Ameche, (more)
- 1937
The notorious Orient Express provides the setting for this romance involving two rival reporters in pursuit of a munitions baron. The two rivals eventually fall in love, but not before they are implicated and subsequently cleared of a plot to kill the arms maker. The munitions man also falls in love and decides to use his skills for making more peaceful products. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edmund Lowe, Madge Evans, (more)
Set in the land Down Under but filmed at Sunland, CA, and on Catalina Island, this low-budget action-adventure stars one of the more forgotten of the singing cowboys, baritone George Houston. Fisherman Wallaby Jim has discovered a rich pearl bed, but his constant brawling gets him in trouble with friends and foes alike. Among the latter is one Rickter (William Von Brincken), an unscrupulous competitor who will stop at nothing, including murder, to get his hands on Jim's strike. In between numerous barroom brawls, George Houston sings "Hi Ho Hum," "Moon Over the Islands," and "The Lady with the Two Left Feet," all by Felix Bernard and Irving Bibo. Low-rent producer Bud Barsky proposed a series of at least four Wallaby Jim adventures,but only Wallaby Jim on the Islands was actually made. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1936
Rex Stout's overweight, under-exercised detective Nero Wolfe was first brought to the screen in 1936 in the portly person of Edward Arnold. As brusque and short-tempered as ever, Wolfe tackles the case of a college professor who met his doom while playing golf, a tragedy followed by the seemingly unrelated death of a young mechanic. Dispatched to do Wolfe's leg work is his acerbic aide Archie Goodwin (Lionel Stander), who manages to discover that both deaths were tied in with a new weapon which silently shoots poisoned needles. Rex Stout wasn't too pleased with the expurgated screen treatment of his fictional sleuth, whose fondness for imported beers was changed by the censors to a predilection for hot chocolate! Well directed by Broadway vet Herbert Biberman, Meet Nero Wolfe was followed in 1937 by The League of Frightened Men, with Walter Connolly as Wolfe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edward Arnold, Lionel Stander, (more)
- 1936
The real "message to Garcia" was delivered by an American lieutenant to Cuban rebel General Garcia, asking for the General's help in the Spanish-American war. The fact that the lieutenant made his way to Garcia in absolute safety was ignored in 20th Century-Fox's Message to Garcia--which is just as well, since otherwise the movie would have been eight minutes long. In the film version, lieutenant John Boles is guided through the treacherous Cuban jungle by Barbara Stanwyck, doing her best to convince us that she's an Hispanic senorita. Also along for the trip is renegade marine Wallace Beery, who may not be as friendly as he seems. Fighting off Spaniards and spies at every turn, Boles successfully completes his mission. As history, Message to Garcia is about as reliable as the Hearst newspaper dispatches which triggered the Spanish-American war in the first place. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wallace Beery, Barbara Stanwyck, (more)
- 1936
A Spanish-language version of Reliable Pictures' Midnight Phantom, this whodunit features Jose Luis Tortosa as an unbending police chief murdered with a poisoned dart. Suspicion centers on Police Lieutenant Alberto Burke (Juan Toreno), the boyfriend of the murdered man's daughter (Adriana Lamar), but as criminologist Professor Graham (Ramon Pereda) proves, the real culprit is someone entirely different and unsuspected. Filmed simultaneously with Midnight Phantom, El Crimen de Media Noche premiered in New York City February 1, 1936 under the title El Fantasma de Media Noche. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1936
Set in the scenic South Seas, this high-seas adventure centers on a sailor who creates all kinds of trouble when he tells a whopper about having found a great Spanish treasure. Soon he finds himself and his girlfriend pursued by a colorful assortment of treasure-seeking pirates. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Houston, Marian Nixon, (more)
- 1936
In the second of producer Harry Sherman's Hopalong Cassidy Westerns, Deputy Sheriff Cassidy (William Boyd) promises El Toro (William Farnum), a retired Mexican outlaw, that he will search for the old man's grandson, missing after a gang of outlaws robbed and murdered the child's parents. With the help of young sidekick Johnny Nelson (James Ellison) and saloon girl Dolores (Joan Woodbury), Hoppy goes undercover as an outlaw in order to infiltrate the gang, which is headed by crooked saloon owner Big Henry (Addison Richards). Dolores is murdered for her efforts, and when Cassidy is forced to kill one of the gang members (Frank Shannon), Big Henry suspects foul play. Johnny, who has found little Pablo (George Mari) wandering in the woods, is wounded by yet another of Big Henry's henchmen (Paul Fix). The latter reports back to his boss, who fears that the child may implicate him in the murders of his parents and quickly plans a trap for Hoppy. There is the inevitable climactic shootout, during which Old Spike (George "Gabby" Hayes), a bartender in Henry's saloon, prudently switches sides and is mortally wounded as a result. Only Big Henry himself escapes the melee, but the villain is hunted down and killed by Hoppy. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William "Hopalong" Boyd, James Ellison, (more)
- 1934
As a struggling young artist in the Philippines supports herself by reading poetry in unsavory bars, she falls in love with an American who has been temporarily blinded due to a beating received from some hooligans. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide
- 1932
In this western, an eastern football star inherits the cattle ranch that paid his way through college. Unfortunately, he discovers that much of the fortune has been squandered by an avaricious cattle baron attempting to build an empire of his own. He is stopped by the masked outlaw, El Coyote, who is actually Don Bob in disguise. He and the footballer join forces to defeat the greedy cattle baron. More trouble ensues after the football player falls in love with the villain's daughter. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George O'Brien, Conchita Montenegro, (more)
- 1930
Sombras de Gloria is the Spanish-language version of the offbeat American musical comedy-drama Blaze o' Glory. Replacing Eddie Dowling and Betty Compson, the stars of the original film, are Argentina's Jose Bohr and North American-born Mona Rico. The plot remains the same, with WWI hero Bohr trying to defend himself on the charge of murdering a former wartime enemy. Once again, the courtroom turns into a cabaret, with Bohr's sweetheart and friends offering musical numbers in lieu of testimony. And once again, logic and continuity are never taken into consideration. Credited as director for Sombras de Gloria is Hollywood's Andrew Stone, who went on to produce and direct such "actuality" films as The Last Voyage (1960) and Ring of Fire (1961), and who late in life returned to the musical genre with Song of Norway (1969). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
